I paused on the opposite side of the bed, and she stopped what she was doing. Her eyes were as red and defeated as I felt.
“Don’t worry. I won’t keep you from them. But I need to go, and they are not staying anywhere without me.” She was firm in her words, mama bear mode fully activated.
If I dared try to go against her, there was no telling what lengths she would go through. I could read that much in her broken stare.
“Just… stay here,” I pleaded, head sinking downward. “I’ll leave.”
“No. This is your house. I shouldn’t be here. I should have never been here,” she muttered, getting as much as she could into the suitcase before zipping it.
She hit a nigga where it hurt with that line, straight sucker punched me, knocking the fucking wind from my lungs.
“That’s how you feel?”
“That’s exactly how I feel!” she snapped. “You brought me here, took me out of my life, and turned my shit out like it was all some kind of game to you. Did the challenge of getting me to open up to you and fall in love get you off? Did you lay around at night smiling in victory thinking about how you were slowly breaking me down!” Rage submerged her, cloaking every inch of her. “All this time, and all it takes is your first love to come back for you to switch up on me. It only proves one thing: you never fucking loved me. I was a possession to you. Hell, you kept me locked up for the first year here. Telling me what to do, when I could do it, holding me like some princess in a fucking tower.”
The words she had for me were all harsh. She was holding no fucking punches, and no lie, a nigga felt like she was going to tip me over soon. Her bark was just as bad as her bite. She knew which buttons to push. I typically wasn’t easily angered, but the pain she inflicted was internalizing into malice.
“I never lied to you about any of this.” I ground my teeth together.
“No.” Harbor laughed a little and swiped the tip of her nose. “No, you didn’t. I was just stupid enough to fall for it.”
“She’s Ivy’s mother,” I declared.
“I know. And up until about a year ago, she was the love of your life. Now she’s back, and you obviously need to deal with that.” She snatched her bag off the bed and held it at her side. “I’ll get the rest of my things some other time. This should be enough for a few days.”
I was at a loss. Bringing both hands to my head, I dropped down into my bed and sat there staring at the door. She passed me by, and I felt for the first time that I didn’t have a right to stop her. She was spot on about me and Ivana. There were a lot of loose ends there, and until they were resolved, I couldn’t move on, not with Harbor and not with myself.
Lock
Seatedin the living room of my home with my daughter on my lap, I could barely believe the breaking news that had interrupted the basketball game I was indulging in. I had a spread of food that Alba had hooked up in front of me, and my baby girl was content being near me. Lately, Alba was doing her best to make things right between us, and I was okay with that since I was getting all of the benefits.
“So, the potato skins are almost done—” Her words were cut short when she saw Harbor on the TV screen and some reporter in her face. “Oh my God! Is that…” She didn’t complete her sentence.
She hovered behind the sofa and watched with me.Harbor appeared to be outside of some restaurant, and she was climbinginto the back of a car while brushing the reporter off. She had asked her plain as day if she had been abducted and was living with the man that made her a victim. I couldn’t quite read her through the TV screen, but she appeared to be very rattled by the turn of events. The reporter turned, and I caught a glimpse of Frequency, looking distressed as they tried approaching him. He turned quickly, and they chased after him, but the camera was doing too much jumping, and eventually, the screen went out altogether.
“What the hell just happened?” Alba questioned, as blown away by the events as I was.
“I have no fucking idea,” I answered, shaking my head.
The doorbell to our house suddenly rang, and Alba took a couple of steps toward the entry.
“I’ll get it,” she offered, disappearing.
I could hear her talking to someone, another woman, and then both sets of footsteps were heading toward us. My heart sank, and a nigga’s stomach suddenly felt tight like I had loose bowels that were about to give in at any moment. Harmonie stood with a smile, waving and admiring me with my daughter.
“Harmonie is here,” Alba announced.
“What’s up?” I asked, and her eyes darted over to Alba before a slight smirk spread across her full lips.
“I just wanted to talk to you. Wow, your daughter is gorgeous.” She complimented, but that was more for Alba than myself.
I could see it all in her eyes, deceit lingering behind the false façade she was putting on.
“Thank you. We just saw the TV. Is that what you are here about?” Alba was curious.
“Yeah. I was close by when I thought I would come and check on you guys. I know how hard this has all been. I don’t know about you, but for that year she was missing, I blamed myself.To find out all this time it was some twisted ass game… I can’t believe my sister put us all through that. She’s selfish.”
“I won’t argue there,” Alba muttered. “I didn’t even know you knew where we lived.”
